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This is an old revision of this page, as edited by Malleus Fatuorum (talk | contribs) at 01:34, 10 March 2009 (→Manchester Small-Scale Experimental Machine: fmt). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

Manchester Small-Scale Experimental Machine

Nominator(s): Malleus Fatuorum
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It is with some trepidation that I present this account of the development of the world's first stored-program computer at the University of Manchester. The machine was designed as a test-bed for an early form of computer memory and was only in existence for a few months before being further developed to become a practical computer, so some technical details are inevitably sketchy. I believe nevertheless that this article gives a comprehensive account of the SSEM's construction and the background to its development in 1948. Malleus Fatuorum 15:13, 28 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

  • Support, well written article on an interesting and important subject. But it would be nice to know how long this computer operated for, what happened to it and whether it had the the reliability problems of so many pre silicon computers. Also there's a reference to tape, if the sources say whether this was paper or magnetic tape it would be nice to link it appropriately (I suspect from the date it would be the former). WereSpielChequers 17:12, 28 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]
    • Thanks for your support. The machine only existed in its completed form for a few weeks. Once it had proven the practicality of the Williams tube and the stored-program approach it quickly evolved into a prototype for the Manchester Mark 1, with bits being continually added and/or redesigned. I'll try to make that clearer in the article. With a few hunded valves there's every reason to believe that it suffered from the same problems as other valved machines, but there's no information on its reliability that I've been able to find. It has to be remembered that the machine was in constant development and it was never intended as a practical computer anyway; work on it never really finished, it just evolved into the Mark 1.
    • The reference to "tape" is in relation to the Turing machine. The SSEM had no tape; I/O was done by manual switches, setting the value of each word in turn. I've added a phrase to the brief description of the Turing machine to hopefully clarify that as well. --Malleus Fatuorum 17:41, 28 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Comments -

Otherwise, sources look okay, links checked out with the link checker tool. Ealdgyth - Talk 20:40, 1 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]
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